1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scheme for providing one or more users with suggestions for particular items that may be of interest to them from a choice space of items that would be cumbersome or undesirable to navigate through using conventional techniques. More particularly, the present invention relates to a machine, method and medium for adaptably determining items from the choice space that may be of interest to a particular user, and to suggest those items to the user for his or her review. To implement this, embodiments of the present invention envision that each of one or more users enter explicit information indicating their preferences for certain types of items within the choice space. Then, using that explicit information and further observing what specific items each user actually accesses from the choice space for their use, the present invention suggests items in the choice space that may be of individual interest to each of the one or more users. The present invention contemplates use with any number of paradigms, such as television, the internet, on-line services, etc.
2. Related Art
For hundreds, if not thousands of years, schemes have been implemented to allow people to more easily identify and obtain certain items that they desire from within a given choice space (i.e., from within an entity or system containing a plurality of available items). For example, reference books are often provided with an index in the back of them to allow a user to quickly identify the page or pages on which desired items of information can be found. By using this index, it is not necessary for the user to scan through the pages of a book to find the desired items, or even to try to guess from a table of contents where the desired items might reside.
In today's electronic society, users of information are presented with an ever-increasing choice of available items. Television is a prime example of this. Initially, the television industry started out with relatively few channels of potential program items, and thus it was not difficult for a user to peruse a TV guide to determine what it was they wanted to watch. However, with the advent of cable television and an ever-increasing number of available programs, it has become increasingly difficult for users to navigate through the jumble of offerings.
As a partial solution to this problem, companies such as Starsight Telecast of Freemont, Calif. have created on-line guides for user's to electronically look through the available choice of television programs. However, having to navigate through even this type of scheme may be more cumbersome than today's demanding consumer would want to deal with. In addition, a user may want to be provided with additional information, such as what new shows have been made available that may be of interest specifically to him or her, as well as to be notified of interesting shows that may conflict with a current show being watched.
Television is not the only place where users are given an increasingly large number of choices. This phenomenon is also occurring in the realm of the "internet" and on-line services. For example, a graphical application of the internet known as the World Wide Web (the Web) has continued to gain popularity, as is evidenced by the explosive proliferation of Web "sites." As a result, attempting to find a web site having desired items of information can be a very difficult task. To assist a user in finding desired Web sites, tools such as "excite" (found at Web address www.excite.com) and "yahoo" (found at www.yahoo.com) offer various key word and concept searching capabilities to assist a user to find desired sites and items that may be therein. As with the television situation, however, it nonetheless is often difficult for a user to go digging for information in this way. In both situations, a user may wish to simply be presented with a choice of web sites or television programs that they would likely be interested in. This would be in contrast to, for example, having to think up key words to form a search and then navigate through the often oblique search results obtained therefrom.
Consequently, what is needed is a scheme for identifying items within a choice space that may be of interest to a specific user in a simplified way, and then present those items to the user for his or her review.